Baking dough is used to make a variety of baked goods including, but not limited to, cookies, pie crusts, breads, pretzels, and pizza. Typically, dough is produced by mixing the various ingredients until a relatively soft, malleable mixture is produced. The dough may then, for example, be formed into a specific shape, as in a pretzel, formed into a particular shape as for a bread loaf, or rolled into a flat sheet and cut into a desired shape, such as a shaped cookie.
When baking dough is rolled into a flat sheet, flour is often used to prevent the dough from sticking on the working surface, the rolling pin, or other item in the work area. The flour often is inadvertently spread throughout a large portion of the kitchen, bakery, or other work station which leads to dirty conditions and even the unwanted introduction of flour into other foods or ingredients.
This problem of unwanted flour distribution is aggravated by the breaking off of small pieces or crumbs of dough while it is being processed. In a typical large flat working surface, such as a kitchen or bakery counter, these dough crumbs are often dispersed over wide areas. Therefore, it would be helpful if both flour and dough crumbs were confined to a small, specific space where the dough is actually processed.
Another difficulty often found in working or processing baking dough is the need to achieve a uniform desired thickness of the final product. As dough is rolled, different amounts of pressure may be placed on different parts of the dough so that some parts of the resulting sheet of dough are thinner than other parts. Typically, the perimeter of the sheet is thinner than the interior of the sheet. As a result, forms, such as cookies, that are cut out of the perimeter of the sheet are thinner and often require lower baking temperatures or shorter baking times than thicker forms. In the same vein, the thinner edge portion of a larger piece, such as a pie crust may require a shorter cooking time and/or lower temperature than the thicker interior of the pie crust. Obviously, determining correct baking times becomes more difficult and problematic when pieces with different thicknesses are baked at the same time. It would be advantageous, therefore, to produce pieces having a more closely uniform thickness to allow for more consistent baking times and temperatures.
An additional factor to be considered in processing baking dough is the desirability of keeping the dough chilled as long as possible. Mixed dough is usually stored in a refrigerator and rolled or otherwise processed on surfaces such as marble or granite that will help to maintain the chilled temperature as long as possible. Inevitably, the longer the dough is processed, the warmer it becomes. When warm, the shortening component in the dough breaks down and the dough them becomes sticky and harder to work. Therefore, it would be beneficial to provide a device or apparatus that would keep the dough in a chilled condition or at least slow the rate of warming of the dough.
A dough board seen at http://armchair.com/store/gourmet/baking/doughboard1.html includes a frame and a board assembly (the “armchair assembly”) that is described as adjustable to provide for rolling dough sheets with different thicknesses. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 6,607,187 to Adler discloses a board for rolling dough, preferably fabricated from wood in which an outer frame is provided with a plurality of grooves and tongues onto which a board may be positioned at different heights within the frame. Neither of these prior art devices addresses the problem of maintaining the dough at a chilled temperature while it is being processed. In addition, both the armchair assembly and the board disclosed in the '187 patent are made with a non-integral construction from different pieces of wood fastened together providing numerous grooves, joints and cracks where pieces and crumbs of dough can lodge making thorough cleaning difficult and often uncertain. This is compounded in the dough board seen in the '187 patent by the use of numerous tongue and groove combinations each of which is a place where dough crumbs, flour, and dirt may lodge without being successfully removed.
Thus, there is a need in the field for a device that will enable the user to reduce the distribution of processing waste such as flour and crumbs when dough is processed, is easy to clean, and also enable the dough to be maintained at a lower temperature for a longer period of time while it is being processed.